Basically a tired cart system like we already have for bears, but for rhinos and elephants. Rhinos could carry’s carts bigger than the ones bears carry’s, and elephants carry’s carts bigger than the ones rhinos carry’s. Or just let rhinos and elephants carry’s carts in general.

We live in the polar and there are no berrys in the polar.. so we are forced to take around 140 k berry every week from freeport to feed all npc .. this task is not only boring but it takes long too.
A easy solution to the problem would be that the food larder has priority of the silo so that big close groups of npc don't eat so many berry of the silo but eat them from the food larder .. A other easy solution would be that you can put vegetable in silos...
I hope you consider this suggestion as in our group we are fighting every week to who should go take the large amount of berrys.. Or even better complety remove the feeding npc mecanism

TLDR: Npc's on swivels are broken, disable them to be mounted onto swivels.
I've talked to a few people on this subject from different companies now and pretty much everyone agrees, please remove NPC's from being able to sit on swivels. Having a device that can be placed behind a doorway on a boat makes ship boarding difficult if not impossible. It's something that either needs to be policed as a bug (along with putting the captain's wheel inside a box) or taken out of the game.
The easiest way to fix this problem would simply be to not allow NPC's to man swivels. That way, you can still defend your ship but you need a player to jump on the swivel if someone boards your ship. I think it would at a much more interesting design to ships in consideration for where you might need a swivel placed to create a "kill box".
Additionally, it opens up a myriad of different ways in which you can attack a ship (especially with the new harpoon changes). I could get close to an enemy ship and have a few of my crewmates jump over to the other side to engage the enemy in swordplay on their deck, meanwhile its chaos as the captains are still fighting on the wheel to shoot cannonballs at eachother while the melee breaks out on either or both of the ships.
This would lead to a new meta when it comes to NPC's making them more useful for fighting. Now the CODE RED button actually would mean something as if someone jumps on your ship you may decide its time to get your cannoneers to focus on the problems on your deck. This also creates a new meta of actually arming your NPC's with gear and swords. Currently, people just put ncp's on stations without any kind of gear on to save weight. Instead people might keep an extra reserve of npc's with gear on board just in case someone manages to glide on to their ship. Even when it comes to giving your NPC's new stat upgrades it would make a huge difference between fighting a level 100 with a bunch of additional melee damage and an upgraded sword vs the current meta which is simply all npc's are leveled into health as they will never leave their station.
At the very least, npc's on swivels should be taken off of ships. I understand the intent especially for using them on another boat, but I think that it would make the game far more interesting and pirate-like to have people grappling over to your side to get in a scrum.
Lastly, I wanted to touch on swivels on the ground. This is more of an optional change as I don't want to take away from the main issue which is swivels on ships. In that same right, however, I think that swivels have no place on the ground being manned by NPC's either. When it comes to base defense you can use puckles, catapults, and harpoons for defenses. The reason I find this so irritating is that people are building large bases on top of pillars that even if you manage to climbing pick your way to the top, they have full swivel coverage that stops you from being able to actually do anything. At least with puckles you can tank a few hits and find a position to use your grenades. With swivels, it's 1 shot and you're done.
I''m open to any other input people may have regarding this, but I think it would make this game quite a lot better if we were to take NPC's off swivels and let players actually have some pirating fun. I hope the dev's see this as they don't often seem to care about posts on this forum. But hopefully someone will be able to catch their ear!

Hi guys,
The island I live on is currently unable to produce salt. So I came up with the idea, why can't we boil saltwater collected from the ocean via bucket to create salt?
So that's my idea to create salt on salt less islands such as mine. As it's needed to keep food lasting longer and a must have for cooking. It's a pain running around islands for just 2 salt that you dig up on the beach.
My Idea is fill up a bucket of water from the ocean. Bring it to a cooking pot / grill and place the bucket inside, then turn the fire on. It will make about 20 salt in 1 full min. Then we could actually use salt effectively on salt less islands.

Segment beds that are based on Boats vs based on land.
Call Beds on Boats "Racks" which already have hard limits based on level of boat.
Leave Beds based on land as beds but have a company wide hard limit on the total amount of beds placed in the game world.

This season we've gotten a lot of settlers and we want them to be allied to us so they don't get gunned down by our defenses but we are running into an issue where we simply have too many settlers to ally them all + have outside allies.
A solution to this would be a Settlement alliance. This alliance would be owned and controlled by the settlement owner. A settlement alliance could have unlimited companies in it and it could have it's own chat (settlement or island chat to keep all the talk out of the global alliance chat). If you are not the owner/controller of the settlement alliance you can not own any islands but you are allied to everyone in the settlement alliance.
A settlement alliance would allow all of our settlers to communicate with each other and us without needing a network of alliances to tie all of the companies together on a single island.

With the upcoming reworks being focused on creating combat, adventure, and players spending more time at sea, I think that there should be various events that broadcast to the players and appear on their maps. These events would give players enough time to travel across multiple zones to reach them before they spawn.
These can be PVE combat events with amazing rewards, high value sunken treasure, high value flotsam, or abandoned ships that can be claimed by whoever wins the skirmish that would follow.

I was looking at the devs pie chart and saw how the devs wanted players to be out on the sea more rather than on land. I then thought of this simple change; rather than losing your planks when their health reaches zero, water would just spill into the ship. This would get rid of the farming for the spare planks, and get rid of the frustrating moments of having one less cannon on a side because you ran out of extra gunports. It would even make the repair hammer even more useful as people can't simply fill in the hole with another plank. Sure it would be a negligible change, but it would make it, so players don't have to farm, and recraft blueprint planks and gunports after a battle.

Hello!
Been a while since I posted here, but after seeing the latest post in Steam about the roadmap post Xbox launch I was excited to see that you guys really seemed to be heading in a positive direction. I've been a big fan of Atlas from the beginning, about the potential that could be found here, and of the Dev team that really seemed to be listening/responding to what the community wanted. But I did have some issues that caused me to lose interest in playing, mainly just the fact that it grew boring and offered little challenge really. I was on the PvE side my last round of Atlas, so removing the PvP aspect does take away from the game a good bit, but I really felt like it didn't have to here. Not with some slight changes that I thought would really help to round the content out.
Your road map hit a lot of those things on the head, so I wanted to throw out some ideas that I had spoken of before that were along the same lines, and hopefully see them get added ingame.
Ships
The ships section of the road map mentioned making it possible for those seeking to "live" aboard their ship, it also mentioned offering more activities at Sea. Both of those are great, and would really drive home the "pirates life" that I think a lot of us were hoping for. But one thing I'd like to add there is customization. The ship system is awesome, and a lot of fun, but in the end building your ship is really just the illusion of customization. In the end, aside from a few wall panels and such, you end up with either an efficient ship or an aesthetic ship. But why not both?
Adding to the shipbuilding system would be easy, even just adding a "modules" type of situation where you could customize your ships capability through "installed modules" would make your ship unique. It would add another layer of depth to your ship that would make it stand apart from others of the same class. Modules for the hull, sails, even combat side would offer a world of difference while not requiring any more visual art for it (Although visual art on top would be stellar). Aesthetic customization seems to be coming along nicely, but more would obviously help the ship to feel less like "just another ship", and more like a "home".
The other issue is the NPC Crews, obviously, they offer solo players or people with small groups the ability to sail larger ships without having to find actual players to sail with. However, when these groups have a combat Galleon each that they choose to sail rather than sail together it makes the game less fun. There are already boons to sailing together, such as having a player with all the cannoneer skills being able to reload faster. Clearly that hasn't proven valuable enough for players to prefer others over NPCs. Adding in better bonuses or boons to having less ships in a company and more player crew when you leave port would also make a world of difference, in my opinion. This could even be achieved by adding a system that checks how many players are on a ship, and has tiered rewards for meeting a specific amount.
5 players - 5% speed increase
10 players - 5% damage reduction
15 players - 10% increase Cargo Weight
Etc etc
Offering bonuses for having more player crew on a ship could make it more attractive to play together rather than the meta (when I was still active) of everyone having their own ship to offer more "overall DPS".
Exploration
The biomes are cool, the different tames and resources available are awesome, how the blueprints force you to gather from different areas is fun, however... I never really enjoyed "exploration". I simply went to a different biome to gather, got the tames I wanted, ran some treasure maps, then left. Despite the world being very pretty, it's not like I would really find anything by searching around. Adding in some form of randomly spawning treasure that offered something of more substance than just gold or blueprints would really make the game more interesting. Similar to the discovery points that allowed you to reach higher levels, but possibly something more "character-specific".
Such as learning new engrams, giving crafters more than just "high intelligence" to shoot for. You travel and explore not only to reach a higher character level, but also to unlock engrams only available by "having travelled the world". This also makes crafting more than just "who has the most points into intelligence and some good intel gear"? It gives those focusing on being a crafter a whole new level of gameplay.
Crafting
Speaking of crafting, I loved what you guys did with BPs here as opposed to Ark, giving them a finite amount of crafts. That was awesome, and really made me interested in wanting to be a crafter. However, I think that side of gameplay could use a little bit more love. What I'd personally like to see is reward for time spent crafting, such as when I've crafted 100 medium hull pieces my base hull piece gets a boost. Maybe it becomes Journeyman, or possibly just has increased stats based on how many times I've crafted that item. This rewards crafters for repeatedly crafting the same thing, so an armorer who has crafted a ton of armor would create at a base level higher than someone who just repec'ed to craft off some BPs. The same for ship builders, weapon smiths, you could even include the architect players making building pieces.
This would really help to create a player economy as well, giving crafters a reason to try and create "businesses". This could also be easily nerfed when you added in dying of old age and breeding to create progeny (if that's still a planned thing). When they die, they retain a small percentage of whatever they achieved with their last character, this could even work for the "Fountain of Youth". Sure, you are made young again, but the process also cost some of your "memories/wisdom" that old age brought you.
In Summary
I'm pretty excited about the roadmap, think you guys have been heading in a great direction for some time, and am looking to come back to Atlas here soon. I hope some of these ideas might spark some interest and grow into something awesome, they are definitely things I thought would add to the gameplay.

Hello,
I was thinking since we have a multitude of ingots that can be made with the forge what if we had a "Top Tier" ship like an Ironclad?
I know the Galleon is a top tier ship and is very large but to make more use of these ingots and move into more of an "industrial era" type warship that can utilize steam or coal engines and still utilize the NPC crew for sails, loading coal/water for engines, as well as cannons would be awesome.
We would still be able to put the submarine and all other side attachments on due to it's large size like a galleon.
Also, having a "metal" tier of building parts would allow for better base defense, bigger raids, more difficult ship battles, and better use of ingots.
I know that's a pretty far fetched idea but I thought I would just throw it out there.
Thanks for your time,
JVGaming
Here's an example of an old Ironclad...
,

We constantly need to split and manually remove or add in small increments from a stack till reaching the overencumbered weight status. It would be great to have an option when picking up a stack to fill up till the overencumbered state so that we remain just below that. This would make transporting goods much less finicky than it currently is.

I am playing Atlas RP on twitch for a while now.
I recently found out how to bind Emotes to keys which is awesome for RP and my viewers don't have to see a menu.
There are 2 Emote Keys that I can bind to other keys freely.
Can we get more of them? Please
With 9 keys i could fill my NumPad and do better RP.
Thanks in advance

As we all know Colonies solved none of the problems that Empires had, save for offline raiding. On PvE servers it serves little purpose but to advertise your island on the map. I feel like it has it's place but it could be SO MUCH MORE. With all this talk of Factions I have my own extensive ATLAS OVERHAUL that should see surges of returning players. Functionally, these are minor changes... just to get it out the door and working. To tie it all together, though, it's a big undertaking. I haven't seen other threads tackle this kind of system yet, so I am going to bring my own ideas to the table. I am not going to be touching on QOL issues in this thread, that's for another day. Sorry.
1: The Nations System Overview
Currently, the colonies system works by allowing players to join a company, and then an alliance of companies. This would not change. Companies and Alliances will still be critical to the game. Emergent Player to Player scenarios drive sandbox games like Ark, Rust, and EvE Online. The current claim system does little to provide the player with a "bucket and pail" to tackle the sandbox with. Currently without any tools or encouragement there is no reason for cooperation; therefor, the fun of the current sandbox is had by shoving handfuls into someone's shorts and eyes. Ergo, Mega clans, griefing, raiding bambis, and tears.... lots of tears. Due to it's limited nature the current system is pretty punishing for players.
Another issue I find is that: everyone I know hates playing in a mega or simply not playing for themselves. I am the same way. While, I enjoyed my time with the likes of GypSEAS, Uganda, No No No, and TC I can not say it was ideal. I never felt like I was actually having fun. It felt more like a social obligation; one which only was needed to protect my meager stash of tames and a ship. The social aspect is and was a huge draw; and part of the reason I stuck around. However, once I got a taste of playing for myself on Private Servers/PvE/SP it changed my views quickly... it was FUN. Exactly the same gameplay... minus just about all of the problems. Players have made the system punishing.
The issue is that players and even the devs carry the same ideals and gameplay philosophy that works for Rust, Minecraft, or Ark but does NOT work for something like Atlas. Atlas, has more in common with EvE Online than any other game, and thus; it should do as much as it can to try to emulate it. Therefor, the claim and PvP system should function in a similar way. Colonies already does this for claims (vulnerability window + wardec), which is great for large alliances; it is not great however, for solos or part time players. It drives player interaction toward raiding... and just raiding. No trade, no intrigue, just raids. I think a good way to reconcile this is to allow hardcore PvP, PvE and casual PvPers to exist on the same server.
Alright, here we go:
Players will be able to chose between four main Nations, all four of which are split into alliances. Players may also chose to not affiliate with a single nation or faction They may even chose to remain hostile to all four if they like. Each alliance decision has different drawbacks or benefits. Each nation and faction has it's own ideology, special blueprints, cosmetics, and benefits.
The Nations are as follows:
Eastern Empire
Western Kingdom
Norse Republic
Southern Syndicates
Pirate Cartels
Eastern and Southern Empires form the "Golden Empires Collation" Faction.
Norse Republic and Western Kingdoms form the "Western Trade Companies" Faction.
Pirates will ignore and defend players who prove bloodthirsty enough, but this comes at the cost of Navy attention.
The presence of the Nations has lead to different levels of "security" in the waters.
National/Empire Waters: PvE except for players enrolled in Faction Warfare, pirates, or those under a PvP war declaration. (More below)
Lawless Waters: Basically nothing changes. Outside of player alliances: anyone can attack you, you can attack anyone. Resources are the most abundant, wild animals spawn at higher levels and are difficult to tame, sometimes lesser mythic mobs (gorgons and yetis) spawn here. These areas surround Powerstones, rather than Freeports.
International Waters: This is the same as standard zones under the current system. Semi-open PvP, any player can claim, decent resources, better wilds, less dangerous islands.
Homestead Waters: These are regions hosted on the player's personal computer. Only they and people invited can access this area. (More below)
Sovereign Waters: An extended version of island claims, this sets an entire grid to PvE and taxes all islands to a central bank. Once waters become Sovereign the company or alliance who owns the water can not be removed. (More below)
Powerstone Waters: Only slight changes here. Convert zones to PvE and allow temporary builds. Allow taming of all non-mythic powerstone spawns if the player has the powerstone for said island.
2: Waters Explained.
National/Empire Waters: These areas are owned by the corresponding nation, and take the current place of Freeports and Lawless islands surrounding them. Players are completely safe from PvP when in these zones unless they are at war with each-other or in faction warfare. Waters are patrolled by NPC pirates who attack ships and players on islands. Occasionally spawns WPE's. Faction Warfare most often happens in these areas. Players with sufficient reputation with either/both the Nation and the Faction Navy may claim certain islands. Faction Navy members get access to larger, better, yet cheaper islands that give more resources once claimed. (Areas owned by Pirate Factions also function in a similar way but are hostile to "good" players. ) Players who's companies are at war are able to attack each-other in these zones. Limited verity of resources spawn in these areas. Travel to other areas required to make anything better than FINE bps, thus encouraging trade, travel, and piracy. Homestead Waters: Meant as a starting point and offline storage area, Homestead Waters host a single grid containing an island with a pre-built small shipyard, low quality map spawns, and crew recruiter. Homesteads provide every Freeport resource. Homesteads do not spawn useful creatures, but do however allow the player to breed any creatures regardless of conditions at a cost to the baby's wild level. Players may store up to TWO personally owned ships. Nothing stored at a Homestead decays and remains in stasis unless the player is present. All NPCs and Tames brought here are fed/paid at no cost to the player. Companies can not store company owned ships at a Homestead. As was mentioned before, this is just a place to start and tuck things away when you go offline for a long time; or a place for absolute casuals. Homesteads provide NO experience. Players are also granted access to a "lumber mill" which provides unlimited wood building pieces, and deployables only placeable on the homestead (not boats). Players must have unlocked desired deployables.
Sovereign Waters: As mentioned before, a sufficiently advanced Company or Alliance can purchase a token from a friendly faction or nation to convert an area into a PvE area that can only be attacked under a war declaration or by an opposing navy. These areas can still be raided, however, the residing company/alliance can not be removed, nor do damaged structures remain damaged (boats and tames however do not regenerate) anything popcorned/left in bags is deposited into the claim flag. By default, only allied companies can build in these areas. Companies may have ONE sovereign grid. Declaring a zone Sovereign spawns uncontrollable NPC ships belonging to the player's company and allied navy. Players can be attacked in open water in these zones. The residing company must remain at a certain level of activity, pay gold upkeep, have settlers, and appease its allied Nation/Faction to maintain control of an area.
Piracy: Areas claimed by pirate players spawn extra resources but are in PvP mode longer than normal grids/islands. They also attract a larger and more powerful than average Navy presence to the area.
3: Better NPCs
"Drone Better. People make problem. Trust me... drone better." - Ivan Vanko
This is going to be a quick one. NPCs don't do enough. NPCs should repair ships when at sea, be able to help farm, watch animals, etc. Make special vendors or quests to acquire specialty NPCs/crew. Allow players to place their own crew recruiter/NPC quest giver. As was mentioned earlier, more NPC factions are needed. Less reliance on mega groups to enjoy the game to the fullest. Having the ability to assign an NPC to a ship and it automatically patrol/escort the player would also be spectacular. NPCs need to preform anything players can do; busy work wise (raising tames, resource gathering, etc) Solo players should not need other players. Instead, players should always be better at what NPCs can do; rather than being a requirement.
4: The Content is the Reward.
I've noticed that playing this game without PvP changes it's nature. In a PvP setting, PvP is the reward for 'content'. Doing a games content for a reward is a poor way to play a game, and a big reason this game ( and WoW) is doing so poorly. Playing the game should itself, be a reward; and it is only that way for PvE /local/Single Players right now. Rewards should be things that make content more fun; tames and buffs are on the right track for that. As you may have gleamed by now, under this system player actions result in the ability to do the same content faster, better, and in more fun ways.
5: Naval Battle + Ships.
Deplanking in its current form looks bad and feels bad. Planks shouldn't disappear. Instead, they should form holes and catch fire/splinter depending on the damage taken. But, never be "lost" instead, they are repaired as needed. When "deplanked" they begin to leak as they would now.
The option to surrender and turn over the ship/portion of resources to encourage piracy would be a boon.
As an anti-griefing and a "fun insurance" measure ships sunk should have the option to re-surface them. For anchored ships, this is just a resource fee. For ships lost at sea, it should require the Submarine and a special token/feat. 6: Faction Rewards
What would alliance be without benefit? As was mentioned before working for a faction/nation rewards you with reputation (or negative rep) used to unlock BPs, powerful ships, tames, NPCs, land rights, and cosmetics.
Conclusion:
I do hope you can see how all of this plays together to encourage ALL types of players. No one is left out under this system. Small groups, solos, and mega groups are each rewarded in their own way. Every form of player interaction is encouraged, and maximizes fun. Even with our current player-base this system would still benefit the players. I hope that even if this system is not utilized that the devs consider some aspects of it. I know if I were developing this game, this is the system the game would have come out with.

This might not be what the game needs the most right now, but I think there's not enough interesting feats to use with melee weapons.
There are like 5 feats in the weaponry skill tree, 3 of them are just buffs to your attacks. So we end up with Circular Slice for swords, and Tremendous Force for Maces. Come on, we need something better than just spinning once with a sword or hitting the ground really hard with a mace! The Pike doesn't even have a usable feat. At least give us 1 more actual feat for each weapon.
Maybe a lunge for the sword where you do a quick jump forward with a stab, inflicting bleed/stun.
An impaling charge with the pike which you can change directions mid-charge, dealing big damage based in distance traveled, maybe even dragging players along like when they're grabbed by lions. (BTW why is the pike's main attack a horizontal slash? Make it a thrust with no forced movement and camera lock like in ARK! Maybe a bit slower for balance).
The mace can have like an uppercut where the user jumps with the momentum of the upward swing, moving a little forward while knocking up/inflicting massive torpor to the target.
Maybe more weapon types would be cool. A lot of icons in the two-handed skill tree represent a two-handed sword being used so I'd really like to see that implemented into a real weapon in-game. The blackjack and Throwing knives have special uses but maybe they should get some love too? I don't really know how tho.
Those are my ideas. All of them have a bit of mobility to help with the rather static movements of most weapons. Hopefully I'm not suggesting something that's too hard to implement.. Sure, they're not historically accurate, but this game wasn't meant to represent historical pirates anyways. You know, with cyclops, magic, undeads and all of that.
If you have anything you'd like to say, feel free to do so .

I think we can all agree sailing for hours eats up a lot of time and tends not to be terribly entertaining.
How about a mobile game for resource gathering from far flung areas.
Financed with your islands gold, using ships you have available. You plan a trip with a mobile device yadda yadda.
I have no clue as to the technical difficulties since I build houses for a living but I can see a lot of interesting inputs and outputs. It could be as complex or as simple as one would like.
For simplicity see No Man's sky's fleet operations.
Just a thought.

Nice! They changed the Suggestion section
What I would love to see in this game is small temporary groups. I mentioned this in another thread but I ran into a problem that needs exactly that.
To be fair I play on an RP Server. Things are slightly different but I think this would be nice for PvP and PvE as well.
Implement small temporary groups. (Let's call it Crew)
I want to invite a player to my Crew. His company isn't touched and my company isn't touched but we can now sail the same ship and play together.
I think this is important for an mmo because it makes it easy and effortless to socialize with other players. This could improve PvP in the long term (less toxic)
I compare this to World of Warcraft. If you had a problem and the members of your guild are far away you would ask strangers to do the quest with you. Some of them were doing the same quest anyway. I know we don't have such simple quests but a treasure map could be such a thing.
Still the WoW example it would be stupid to expect someone to leave their guild for a quest or even start a new one. This is to heavy!
I know that this isn't as easy as it sounds especially in regards to the use of ships. Because most of the time if you are in a company, all ships are company owned. Would a crew member be able to sail other company ships as well?
We could need an option in the ship menu where you can set this per ship.
"Use Sails"
"Use cannons"
"Use boxes"
"Use steering wheel"
For example.
So you can make adjustments what crew members can currently use on ships.
This could be used as a try out mechanism for new members as well. Which is super cool for PvP where you don't trust anyone

I really like the idea of WPE, that is something I was hoping since almost the beginning of the game, awesome it will be added.
Though, I came with an idea : Make different kind of WPE, make a "company like"
Here is the idea, instead of having everytime the same WPE but with different difficulty/size, make different WPE Company, with each their own skins/flags/constructions type.
Here are some fast exemples : Blackbeard company : Pirate theme, pirate skins (Cloth and Hide armors), weapon : pistol/saber/throwing knives, special tactics : like to board, use Harpoon, mainly alone at sea, very aggressive. Royal Navy company : Marine theme, officer skin, weapon : pistol/saber (or special skin ?)/carabin, special tactics : mainly in groups, defensive. Asian company : Asian theme (japanese ?), Hydra Heavy skin, the new sail skin, weapon : sword (katana skin?)/pike/bow/crossbow/fire arrow, special tactics : like to use fire a lot
(...)
WPE Company would fight eachothers at sea, some kind of special event.
Make the WPE Company live in their own region, so you need/want to travel a lot to discover every of theses WPE Company. All thoses region would become even more unique.
Having to fight the same type of WPE everytime will become veryyyy boring. If their is many WPE Company, it will become unique everytime (I'm not saying that it needs 1 company per island, hell no, but 1 company per region would be very awesome) (edit : By region I mean "Tropics", "Desert", "Tundra").
Let us participate to create/image thoses WPE Company
As we all know, some of Atlas players are very talented to create/imagine, just look at the Show 'N' Tell and see how awesome things emerge from it.
Make a contest like the Show 'N' Tell, where people would give :
Company name
Theme
Flag (with image)
Construction design exemple (with image)
Ship design exemple (with image)
Lore/story behind the company
For the more talented one, draw all the concept art if it doesn't already exist in the game, and if it's really awesome, implement it in the game with Atlas Team (dunno how hard it could be ?)
The contest would work as a Show 'N' Tell, people send their proposition, and as for Show 'N' Tell, that's the Atlas Team that choose the winners. (so no troll as "Area 51 with Naruto Runners flags, even if it's funny, that's not the point here. It also let the Atlas Team choose to not break the actual lore of the game or everything)
FURTHER
Make quest through WPE Company
If you completly wipe a WPE Company, you win something (dunno what, it could be a skin ? a skill ? else ?).
All WPE Company have one main base with their captain (a mini-boss ?)
Each outpost you destroy/claim, the more the main base become vulnerable ?
Be able to interact with company ? Buy things ?

Let's forget companies for a moment and talk about settlements.
I have a crazy idea and I can't wait to hear from all of you how bad and stupid it is First the Simple explanation
Companies can only have 1 Island which merges Company and Settlement into one and the same thing.
Players can join multiple Settlements. Second the complicated version
1. Get rid of Companies (just hear me out)
2. Implement Crew (explained below)
3. Expand on the Settlement mechanic so that Settlements become a substitute for companies
Crew
A crew is just a casual party of players who meet and want to play together for some time and do stuff. This group is absolutely temporary.
The limit should be about 5 - 10 people. The leader of the Crew is the captain. And if the Captain owns a ship the crew can use sails and stuff.
Maybe different settings for chests but ... details. Or maybe it is bound to a ship like the settlement is bound to an island.
Raid Group
Just a group of crews. This is also temporary just for raids like the kraken or a fight.
Settlement
The settlement works at least as we know it right now. You claim an island and all that stuff. That's why we need the Crew as a small substitute for the company because it would be difficult to play with other people.
The Settlement owner can allow single players, or a whole crew, to become a permanent settler on the island. From here the whole thing could work as a company but it is bound to the Island itself. Players are not limited to a single settlement/island. They can become a settler on several islands. Maybe without limit. There are different ranks for Settlers and with that different things they can do. Building houses, building cannons, etc.
The Settlement owner can set basic laws and of course taxes on farming and trading in player shops. (Or for docking your ship?)
Alliance
An alliance is formed between two settlement owners. Each settlement has the alliance rank and it applies to every settlement member of the allied Settlement.
So why this change and where are companies?
Companies are gone in this idea. This applies to players on islands. There are no companies on the open sea. Just temporary crews and maybe bigger raid fleets. The ocean is lawless. You are just you and your crew and your ship. If you set foot on an island. The options you have are determined by your relationship to the settlement.
The thing I see here and that is the main point where I hope we can solve some issues with the game, is that right now people identify too much with an abstract name or company. If they identify with a settlement, at least in my fantasy, we could get a more open world. More cooperation (even on PvP). More trade. More piracy. I don't know. I think this sounds wonderful.

First, I don't want anyone to keep the full inventory after death. That would be stupid and i know it!
BUT
If this should become an MMO and stories should emerge we need to connect to our character a little bit more.
Why bother about cosmetics if they are gone with the next bug or shark?
So here is an idea
I don't know right now how long a corpse stays until it despawns but let's assume it is 5 minutes.
If you die you have the option to respawn instantly (if there is a bed ready)
Or you have the option to wait until your corpse is gone (5 minutes here) and to keep your inventory.
But only Armor and equiped weapons and tools. Everything else is gone or is left behind in a bag. That way you can build your character and keep it.
Or if you don't want to wait because you give a s**t about cosmetics you can just respawn as usual.
Your corpse can still be looted by someone else and if the person takes your pistol. You won't respawn with it of course. So you could wait 5 minutes and still be naked. Maybe we could get the name of the Thieve and set a bounty on his head

People are still worried about their ships so here is an idea.
What we need:
- 1x claimed island
- 2x new structures
- 1x ship
The claimed island could be the island of any company with a good amount of gold in their bank (or flag?)
They will build a new structure, which also solves the need for a requested feature.
The Dock
I imagine docks like they are done at DarksideRP they have a mod for that but thats about the cosmetic part
So you have a dock structure that you can build and snap onto each other so we don't have to use wood structures. The Bollard
This snaps to a dock and you can attach a ship to it. They could look fancy.
You can set a gold price per hour that a ship has to pay to stay attached to this structure. As long as a ship is attached to a bollard it is invincible no matter what phase the island is in. The gold is payed from the ships resource box. And the gold doesn't vanish into nowhere. The gold goes directly into the bank of the land owner.
The ship could be any ship. If it is a ship of the same company as the bollard it costs nothing. Or you can make some settings in your claim flag what enemies, allies and company members have to pay. But why?
This is an easy way to make gold. Every single player wants to have its ship protected. As solo player or just a group of new players you could anchor in the harbor of another company. The ships would be invincible as long as they have gold.
This would give players who build their harbor a meaningful decision about how to build it. You can protect it with automated NPC cannons but then nobody that isn't part of your alliance can anchor there. So less gold for you. Or you make it open to everyone entirely and provide a safe option for traders and player shops. This would also lead to more gold on ships because they don't have to pay only the crew. And that could lead to more piracy in open waters. If you know a famous port where many players park their ships you could patrol this area.
The big advantage I see here is that if that works and players open their ports to others. You don't need a base on your own to protect your stuff. You could just play with your ship as a base. Other thoughts
The question is whether the bollard and the dock it is attached to becomes invincible as well or not. Because you could destroy it. Does the effect for the ship still stay as it was? Just details

Hey,
I'm making this post to suggest some additions and changes to improve game play for most players.
- Hitching Post (I know this was an Ark mod, but it is very helpful for breeders and is historical accurate since throughout the ages, man was always able to tie down their animals )
- Bird Stands (For crows, seagulls, parrots, etc, to be able to stand on, instead of being walking around on the floor)
- Grappling Hook on the Crossbow (Its a welcome addiction to increase range and speed of launching a grappling hook, also useful for catching crates while in a moving ship)
- Draw Bridge (Would be an interesting feature to add, so we can build castle like buildings)
- NPC Patrols Routes (Being able to set a patrol route for our NPC Guards, would be an interesting feature)
- Glass Windows/Walls (Should be able to craft with the use of crystal)
- Tranquilizer arrows/bolts with the use of poisons
- Weapon rack (Mostly for show or storage in ships or bases, also useful for show for customers)
- Armour Stand (Same reason as before)
- Dung Beetle (Remake a of an Ark creature that "everyone" wants)
Not sure if any of these were said or commented about before... I saw a few posts but havent searched all of them.
Anyways these are some of my ideas and ideas of people i play with.
If possible, would like to hear the point of view of the devs about these ideas..
Anyways, keep up the good work, i thing the game is going in the right direction and is improving constantly.

Sorry for the click bait title
I was thinking about something I find very interesting let me explain my idea.
1. Get rid of explosive barrels like they are now
2. Gunpowder can no longer be placed in any container or storage we currently have
Instead, implement another barrel that works more like the water barrel but is filled with gunpowder instead.
This barrel gets heavier the more gunpowder you fill in there. It is the only place where you can put gunpowder after you take it out from mortar & pestle.
This barrel can only be carried by hand (like a penguin) and not placed in any inventory if it is filled with any amount of gunpowder.
This barrel is always explosive and doesn't have to be activated so you can shoot it with any gun to let it explode.
This barrel does damage based on the amount of gunpowder inside.
This barrel is necessary for cannons. It as important as the ammo box container because you will need gunpowder AND cannon balls to operate a cannon.
Gunpowder in this barrel spoils really fast if the barrel comes into contact with rain or with water in general.
Gunpowder wouldn't be necessary to craft cannonballs but to craft other stuff that need gunpowder there must be a barrel in close range to the smithy for example.
So why this change?
It would make ship battles much more interesting because you need to design your ship in a way that the gunpowder doesn't get blown up too fast.
It makes ship management more interesting because you need another resource.
It is a high risk, high reward object that you can use to attack other ships and structures but it is very fragile of course. So if you can manage to get a full barrel dry and safe onto another ship. You deserve to make huge damage.
You would need to think about the location where you store gunpowder inside your base and ship.
It gives the player the opportunity to make meaningful decisions. Both for the player owning the barrels and for the player who is attacking.
And to me it sounds like a nice challenge to play with these things.
I know I posted a less formulated version of this in suggestions but I feel like the suggestion section is cluttered with months old up-voted threads nobody needs anymore. So here we go!

The fact that more or less everyone simply kills themselves when vitamin levels get low has been covered in a hundred threads. So, let me begin 101...
If everyone takes steps to avoid dealing with the current food mechanic, it's a safe bet that it's a mechanic no one likes. So, why is inevitable death by vitamins still a thing? It's not fun and it adds only frustration to the game. For example, earlier, I was involved in a fairly fun naval fight when I noticed the vitamin debuffs. Ok, well now I need to disengage and find someplace safe to murder myself before I fall over dead at the wheel. Fun stuff.
As a design principle, no single tertiary game mechanic should kill the player if that player chooses to not utilize that tertiary mechanic. Food should provide a buff (like every other MMO) for those who take the time to harvest, grow, cook and eat quality food; it should absolutely never hinder a player who chooses to play at baseline, foregoing a food buff. I'm not sure who's pet mechanic the current death-by-vitamins is, but that individual has no business designing game systems.

i hated arks loot system, people who adminned know some of the pain, and those who search for bps also know the pain. The ark system was horrendous, and our copy paste of it is even worst. There was almost no thought in the drops it feels, we need many limitations, ie shipyard bp should be 1 craft. things like scissors and saddles that are white, should let you use those bps without the skill, otherwise cut them out of the loot table already. The wild range of the bps is maddening, its green/fine it needs a set amount of points and that's it, ie fine sword bp +1-6% damage, and +1-6% durability bonus, done. and yes i said as low as 1, because we all have gotten items that were like mythical with 0 increase. there should always be an increase, even if its slight. I also have always been against mythical, i think they have a place, and that is on unofficial servers. But we need to reign in the loot system, and actually go through it, with reasonable numbers, and not the mess we have now. Some items only really have one stat, someone yes has to take the time, and simplify the loot system, and put each item in individually. The reality is sometimes the crafts are way to many, sometimes the stats are just not even worth anything. We need to get away from levels, and start going for rarity. the system was bad in ark and its dragging down Atlas like a sinking ship

I am a fan of physical cargo.
And I know that lately we are able to stack gunpowder in the ships ressource box.
But here is the idea:
Either replace current explosive barrels with the one I will describe or add them as an addition.
How about a barrel structure like the water barrel. A barrel you can place and pick up with its content but not for water. Just for gunpowder. And what if this would be the only structure that stacks gunpowder? If you shoot it, it explodes. But damage depends on the amount of gunpowder inside.
Or gunpowder gets a spoil timer (because it gets wet over time) And it is only save inside the barrel.